Tension between Israel, Gaza militants flares up

Hamas was quick in retaliatory attacks against Israeli positions in the occupied Palestinian territories when it launched 90 rockets.

Israeli media reported that more than 140 rocket alarm sirens also sounded throughout communities near the Israel-Gaza border from midnight into the morning. 'The Israeli military has delivered its most punishing blow against Hamas since the 2014 war. The raids were a response to rockets fired into Israel, he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will not accept a ceasefire unless all hostilities end including incendiary kites and balloons from Gaza, even as Egypt-brokered ceasefire holds after a day of intense fighting.

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The security sources also said that Israeli army artillery fired several bombs on the outskirts of southern Gaza Strip, targeting military facilities that belong to Hamas movement's armed wing.

Announcing their deaths in the strike on a Hamas facility on Saturday, the Palestinian health ministry said they were walking on a road nearby when they were hit with shrapnel from the huge blast.

The Israeli military had no immediate reaction to that strike but said it had targeted a separate high-rise building in the northern Gaza Strip that was used as a Hamas urban warfare training facility.

Three Israelis were wounded when a rocket hit a house in the city of Sderot near the Gaza Strip, authorities said.

Violence flares as Israel strikes Gaza, Hamas fires rockets

"The strike was conducted after IDF troops warned residents of the building in advance".

The bombing exposed a tunnel under the building, which the army said was "part of a tunnel network dug by the Hamas terror organization all through the Gaza Strip". Israeli police says four of the projectiles caused damage.

Twenty-five people were wounded across Gaza, it said.

Israel launched three large-scale military operations against the Gaza Strip.

Tension between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has been flaring up over the past few weeks, where the Egyptian security intelligence, which always mediates a ceasefire between the two sides, repeatedly intervened to stop more escalation.

Palestinians in Gaza have been rallying every Friday since March 30 as a part of a peaceful campaign known as the Great March of Return. In fresh violence Friday, a 15-year-old was shot dead during the demonstrations and a 20-year-old died later of gunshot wounds sustained during the protest, the Gaza health ministry said.

Since March, more than 130 people have been martyred and thousands more injured by Israeli army fire during Palestinian protests against the decades-long Israeli occupation and 11-year blockade, which has gutted the coastal enclave's economy and deprived its roughly 2 million inhabitants of basic commodities.